Baucq, Philippe

(1880-1915)

   Philippe Baucq was born in Brussels on 13 March 1880. He studied architecture at the Académie royale des Beaux-Arts and completed his first architectural designs for a school at the place de Londres and for the Institut Solvay. He enjoyed a growing reputation and was commissioned to design a number of townhouses for an aristocratic clientele. Anxious to promote the welfare of the poorer classes, he founded, together with several friends, the Association catholique de Linthout, an organization that provided vocational training for workers.

   Following the occupation of Belgium in World War I, he participated with others, including Edith Cavell, in assisting fugitives to escape to the neutral Netherlands. Baucq played an important role in disseminating the clandestine newspaper La Libre Belgique, and he assisted in organizing the "Mot du Soldat," a service providing a communication link between soldiers at the front and their relatives in occupied Belgium. Caught by a German patrol, he was accused of espionage and imprisoned at Saint-Gilles. His trial, at which no defense testimony was allowed, took place on 7 October 1915. He was condemned to death and shot by firing squad on 12 October.